


The View from Planet Earth

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Dating, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, Future, Growing Old Together, I Love You, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Married Life, Normal Life, Old Age, Old Married Couple, Steven Universe Future, Sunrises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23164627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: Just because they’re all grown up doesn’t mean they can’t go on dates from time to time. Steven’s worked up the perfect moment to take Connie out for a little excursion as they talk and think about life, love, and what it means to have their family.
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	The View from Planet Earth

“Are you ready?” Steven asked.

Connie took his hand and smiled. Of course she was ready, but Steven loved hearing her say it.

“Let’s head on home, dear. Goodbye again, everyone!”

Steven and Connie both raised their hands and waved at the chorus of voices that followed them out. David, their youngest, held both his children by the hand and encouraged their voices with his wife waving alongside. Rosie, their oldest, squeezed her wife on one side and Pearl on the other as the triplets yelled their goodbyes from the table with Amethyst. Garnet, Lapis and Peridot waved from the couch with their middle child Kerry, who waved with one hand and held onto their baby with the other. The family tableau flashed one more time before the warp pad activated and lit up their world with blueness.

Family gatherings like that were becoming harder and harder to get together, and even more difficult to leave. But Steven looked over at his wife in the warp stream, and he knew it was necessary. Anyone else who was approaching eighty years would love to be in her condition, and yet her body was still human. They had to take precautions, and they had to leverage their energy as the days went by.

She was still so beautiful to him. Connie had aged with her mother’s poise and precision, but her father’s buoyant optimism about the whole process. The perfect silver ponytail had remained as strong as ever from where Steven had tied it this morning, woven with the last few black streaks Connie had left. Feeling the coldness through his thinning curls, Steven knew he would have been grateful to be in her position.

The warp pad reconstructed the ground beneath their feet as Steven tried to hide his grin. As soon as they touched down, Connie gasped with surprise. The jungle noises spilled over their ears in what must have been the break of dawn.

“Steven!” Connie chastized. “Really now, it’s late.”

“What, I can’t take you on a little sunrise excursion?”

“Is that why you were in a sudden rush to head out?”

“I may have planned some time zones out. It was easier to do it on Earth than the closest Gem planet. Two suns, can you imagine?”

“This is romantic enough without imagining you doing math for me.”

Dates were much easier to plan once they decided to slow their lives down. Pulse-pounding adventure was a thing of the past. Even if there was some danger in some corner of the galaxy, the immortal Diamonds could take care of that all now, even if setting up the intergalactic network had taken a good number of years. It had allowed for Steven and Connie to have their family, to get themselves situated on Earth, to think about the future far off in advance.

Connie started out ahead, taking her time going down the familiar path to the sunrise overlook, with Steven patiently behind her. She moved with precision and a strength that could only come from her past of being in her physical prime. Steven watched her move, towering behind her. Connie had risen and lost an inch of height with time, but Steven had never stopped growing, even when the process now was monumentally slow. Such were his genes, and such was their life together. Everything was slowing down, but nothing ever truly stopped.

Each location on Earth with a warp pad had been reformatted for Gem travel and Steven’s own personal touches. Years ago, he had scouted out the most pristine places on the planet and made them into a kind of connected personal park, just for him and Connie. All the Gems went along with the plan, and they probably suspected that Steven had an ulterior motive even if he had never told them. The wedding, anniversaries, family outings and more were all able to have the best locations in the world. Nothing was quite like home, though. 

“What’s the occasion?” Connie asked as they walked. “Is there some surprise waiting for us at home?”

“Good weather today is all. I thought we’d get a chance to see the colors from here. Perfect cloud balance, temperature, everything!”

“A once in a lifetime opportunity, then?”

“Aren’t they all?” Steven said. He stepped up to put a hand around his wife’s shoulder, then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Just like you.”

He knew she was blushing underneath it all. Connie sometimes tried to hide her romantic side under the guise of practicality, but Steven knew after a lifetime that she was just as cheesy about her love life as he was. The overt displays of love were more Steven’s thing. At home, the kisses abounded, the touches were gentle, and their home where they had chosen to retire was just far enough away from other human beings for comfortable isolation.

Building a new warp pad had been surprisingly difficult, but the Diamonds had helped along the way. Steven wondered how they were doing right now. They didn’t speak much these days, not since one disastrous anniversary interruption. Steven still wished them well in their education. On a cosmic scale, they had learned so much in such a short period of time. If they had been human, the stars only knew how they would have turned out. But they were probably fine. Steven had bigger and better things to worry about. He heaved a little sigh.

“You’re thinking about Kerry in the house, aren’t you.”

“They’re going to be fine with the Gems,” Steven said. “I’m not...really worried. They know better after raising me with dad, but still.”

“We have the space. I know you wanted them to stay—”

“I couldn’t force that decision on them right now. The Gems are better equipped. Besides, I got you to take care of.”

“I’m the one taking care of you and don’t you forget it,” Connie said. 

“Mea culpa, mi amor,” Steven chuckled.

Kerry’s partner passing in childbirth was the hardest thing to happen to the family in recent memory. The gatherings and the support was necessary, in Steven’s eyes, to keep them together. They all needed to stay sane and apart, and they all had their busy lives, but it was Steven’s ultimate decision to keep all the Universes together. It had helped him when Greg had passed, and it could help their child and grandchild now.

Steven and Connie had had the talks long before their own eventuality. Steven felt an itching underneath his eyelid, in his tear ducts, and a horrible hollow feeling rushed through him before passing with the tropical wind. It never failed. He didn’t want to think about letting Connie go. He didn’t have to. She had so many years in her, and so did he.

There would be no more resurrection, not after Lars. Humans weren’t meant to live that long. Lion had already bounded off to explore the wilds of the world with Lars’s crew, and Steven had accepted that goodbye. That’s all it was: a goodbye.

The cliff came into view through the trees. An iron-wrought bench with waterproof cushions sat facing the darkness of the ocean. Only a sliver of light began to shine over the clouds. The whole arcing horizon was covered in thin stratus clouds, dotting the sky like leaves scattered over a parking lot. When the sun eventually started to burn up the sky, it was still far below showing its face, but the light still reached the clouds and the endless blue. Connie let out a deep breath at the sight. They had visited this island so many times before, but it greeted them like a new friend every time. Steven knew from the red and yellow streaks in the distance that this would be one of the best sunrises they had seen from this point.

He guided Connie over and brushed off the seat before she lowered herself. The bench creaked as Steven sat down next to her with a grunt. Connie leaned over into the breadth of her husband’s chest. The diminutive pressure of her ear on his body was just enough for Steven to feel her pulse. He could feel her body at all times as he ages, as his senses increased and his powers manifested in ways he couldn’t predict. The more time he spent with Connie, the more he knew about her. Her body was part of him now, an indirect fusion out of time.

Birds called out to each other in the dark jungle behind them. Thousands of plants were beginning to unfurl their leaves and soak up the eventual rays. Perhaps a curious set of eyes were upon them now, some undergrowth predator wondering what these apes were doing in its territory. Steven couldn’t feel them, not with Connie so close. His hand around her shoulder squeezed gently. She overpowered his senses, and he loved it.

“Have you thought about a generational gap?” she asked suddenly. 

“A gap in what?”

“None of our kids had your Gem power, but maybe it skipped a generation. David and Kerry, they could have kids who have the same powers as you.”

That was a scary thought. Steven frowned as he imagined what things would be like for the family if they knew more about the Gem powers and the problems he had had as a young man. But aside from quick healing and empathic natures, none of their children had shown any of the same kind of power that Steven had had. He was thankful he didn’t have to give up himself and leave like Rose had done. It wouldn’t have been fair. He was, thankfully, human in the end.

And he was growing like one as well. Connie had been right; she was taking care of him more than he would have ever admitted. Memory, sight, flexibility — everything he had taken for granted he was worried about now. Nothing had happened, but the worries had sunk in. It was all for Connie’s sake that he fretted silently. They had spoken about all their problems when they were fixable. Problems that couldn’t be fixed made Steven anxious in a way he didn’t like to think about. Only the love of his wife kept him from going stir-crazy in his own head. The thought of her kept him sane. If she knew how much he worried, she would worry, too, and he couldn’t have that. The only solution was not to worry. It was silly, but it worked, just a little. 

“The Universe line is going to have fabulous hair and long lives,” Steven said at last. “Beyond that, I don’t think the Gem side is going to continue. I hope not, for their sake.”

“David’s little ones, floating off the ceiling and making bubbles…”

“Oh goodness, the triplets—”

The two of them laughed together as the sun began to peer over the horizon. Steven’s laugh turned into a sigh as he drummed his fingers up and down his wife’s arm. Warmth began to flow up from the sea.

“It’s just so amazing, the way you have to look at it,” Steven said.

“At the sunrise, or at life?”

“At the sunrise. I’m not a philosopher.”

Steven raised a hand in front of them, sliding his finger until it laid flat on the horizon.

“I was thinking about this when I picked it out,” he said, “about the horizon and how it comes up. From the universe’s perspective, we’re being rolled towards the light, and the skyline doesn’t really exist — it’s just where the sun hasn’t shone yet. The sun isn’t really rising, the horizon isn’t falling. We’re just turning. It made me a little dizzy.”

Connie nodded along. Out of all the people he could have rambled to, Steven knew she understood him the most. It was just a passing thought about points and lines, about the geometry of space. It was fascinating to him, to think about what their eyes could see, what the world would look like from another part of the universe. Steven and Connie had been one of the few humans fortunate to see that in the flesh.

“Your brain never stops going, does it, Mister Universe.”

“Only when we’re watching bad movies.”

“I should clear out the queue. Aren’t you glad we got some of those old VCRs transferred?”

“Most of them.”

Sometimes, Steven felt the urge to get up and watch the tape his mother had left. It had been more than half a century since he had first seen it, and only now could he come to terms with living a life separate from her past. Life was strange like that. Human beings didn’t have a purpose or a fate in his eyes, but they had responsibilities. Some of them were personal and some of them were general. For Steven, he knew all of his personal responsibilities from a young age.

Starting a family had meant he had laid some strict ground rules for Connie and especially for himself. Luckily, all of their children had grown up without even knowing what they were. They were secret rules, private rules, things that Steven had kept so tightly inside that he wondered how he had survived without them. There were no secrets that needed to be kept about the past. There were no feelings unacknowledged. The list was kept between himself and Connie, and none of the family were any the wiser. And the fact that Rosie, David and Kerry had grown up with families of their own and children of their own without questioning whether or not it was the right thing to do meant that Steven had succeeded.

What would things have been like if he hadn’t matured? What would the family look like if he hadn’t beaten himself over the head, day after day, forcing himself to be healthy? It would look like his own life, like his father’s life, some horrible hybrid of distance and overindulgence. Steven felt a twinge of revelation. All the exhaustion he was feeling in his old age was coming in at least some part from the fact that he had spent so much of his adult life in recovery.

“Darn,” he mumbled.

“What’s on your mind, honey?”

“I wish I could sit here and say that I did it all for you. I — it would be the romantic thing to do, but it’s not honest. I’d give up everything to love you again, and I’d never dream of a life without you, but… Sometimes I still feel selfish.”

“You’re feeling selfish for my sake, Steven. I’d say that’s at least more self-aware than a real selfish person would feel,” Connie said.

“Is that enough, though?”

“It’s enough for me. Now hush your worrying. Look there.”

Steven let his eyes focus on the horizon. Today, he chose to look at the sun as if it was stationary and the world was turning downwards, rotating to expose itself to the light. Was it no longer a sunrise if there was nothing rising? The word was so focused on Earth’s perspective, but for the longest time that’s all humans had. Seeing things from space, from the sky, from other people’s eyes — it was all so difficult sometimes. But the light traveled to meet them like it met every other human being, with the same warmth and joy regardless of how they saw it.

The sky glowed brilliantly. From the lip of the world, beams of gold burst through over and underneath the clouds, burning the edges of their strata. A red aurora simmered where the air and water kissed. The center of the sunrise warmed the island and sent the birds and insects into a frenzy. One thousand tiny voices all began to sing their praise, mixed with the sound of waves crashing below the cliff, and it was the most peaceful sound in the world. Everything was moving, and yet everything felt still. The clouds drifted above them so slowly that they seemed to come to a stop above the earth.

Steven felt his heart beat gently in his chest. Connie sighed alongside him, their bodies rising and falling like the tide. Watching the sunrise, Steven’s body began to calm his mind, soothing the constant stresses of his brain with the lull of his own blood.

“I’m so glad I’m with you,” he whispered.

“I love you, Steven.”

“I love you too. So, so much.”

Maybe the sun was like an iris, with the sky and the horizon acting like massive lids opening for the eye to see. Connie was like the sun then, Steven imagined, when he had opened his eyes and let the light pour into him. There were too many images and thoughts he had had about her over the years to put into words. Flowers reminded him of Connie, as did certain landmarks, smells, meals, the colors of a deep forest, the sense of civilization in a hot car on a cold day, the sight of a cicada’s exoskeleton perched on the wood of their home. Everywhere he saw beauty, Steven saw his wife. It was only in his old age that he learned to slow down and appreciate it.

Here, though, was something they could enjoy together. The sunrise was predictable. The future was not. Rosie, David and Kerry had not been predictable. The lessons that Steven and Connie had learned growing up had made the challenges liveable. There were always more lessons to be learned. Life and death and love and birth, Steven thought, and he smiled. He hadn’t thought about that song in a lifetime.

“Did you ever think we’d be here?” Connie asked. “Did you think we’d really be happy?”

Steven drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment.

“For a long time, you know, I...I didn’t. I still don’t know how we got here, Connie, I’ll be honest.”

“Aren’t you glad, though? We did it. Whatever ‘it’ is, we did it.”

What was that elusive ‘it,’ Steven wondered. There was the notion of a life well-lived, a measure he had no idea how to track. There were lessons learned, of which there had been so many, and Steven knew there would be many more. Lives and deaths that had encompassed their hearts had passed on by already. Connie was a mother, a grandmother, and was happy enough to declare victory over some goal mysterious even to her own tongue. Steven was happy. Wasn’t that enough?

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Steven said.

**Author's Note:**

> Day one of #jam-bomb over on Tumblr! As always, thanks for reading <3


End file.
